I know this is a fairly common statement on my blog but... I AM SO BEHIND. I started skating again about two weeks ago now. I had to miss one day due to awful food poisoning (I will never be able to eat a chicken tender ever again in my life.) It was only my first completely missed practice in this recruitment, but it feels like so much more since I was off-skates for so much of it. They've been doing a lot of pack drills and I'm having difficulty keeping up. I can stay with the pack, but I can't move around very quickly. While moving on the outside should be be harder for me being a slower skater, in a way I found it was easier because I can occasionally stick my bad leg out to the side and give it that quick stretch it needs every once in awhile.

There was another drill that gave me trouble over the last few practices where we practiced forming walls and helping our jammers past the blockers. I am *totally useless* in a pack right now. I'd look behind me, see the jammer is coming up on my right, try to cut across the track only to find myself looking at the jammer from behind. I'd rush up to try catch up with them, but being quite possibly the second slowest skater in recruitment right now, there's just no catching up. We've run through the drill a number of times and so far I've not successfully blocked a single person (unless you count the time I accidentally wheel-locked myself and tripped, taking out one of the blockers and giving my jammer a chance to pass by.)

The ankle is holding up well, considering all it's been through. The pain is about gone. I skated last night pretty much pain free. There was a little bit of difficulty during warm-ups, but once I tightened up my skate and my heel stopped shifting in my boot, it was fine. They're shifting me to once a week now in physical therapy instead of twice a week, but it's going to be more aggressive, so we'll see how I do after that. The fact that it's not hurting though gives me hope. My leg is still completely useless. By the second time I attempted my five-in-one, I could barely support my own weight. By about halfway through practice, I've got that burning feeling you get in your muscles when you're working muscles that have never been used before. By 3/4s of the way through, it's numb and has the consistency of a noodle. But at least it doesn't hurt! Weak, I can handle. That just means it's time to get to the gym.

I'm back up on skates again and promise I will update soon!

In the meantime, Five Stages of Grief and the Third Year Beginner - I am very familiar with the stages mentioned in here. This is pretty much everything I was feeling after last recruitment, except I was much worse than this girl. Hell, on my five-in-one last time around, I was 20 seconds over. I wasn't quite at the point of needing to talk to a mental health professional, but still, you get the general idea of things. So, yeah, interesting read for anyone who doesn't end up making it on a team.

Ugh. I can't handle this any more. I need to skate. I promised the physical therapist I would take a week off from skating again, and I did. I'm getting back up on Wednesday. I think I've also reached my limit in physical therapy. The pain was bad in the beginning, but going to PT just made it worse and worse. I'm going to talk to them on Wednesday morning about being discharged. This is getting ridiculous. I was supposed to be in for three weeks. It's almost two months now. I'm missing my entire recruitment and some things were said tonight that made me feel really self-conscious about the fact that I've been sitting out for so long, that I'm on my second recruitment, and made me seriously sit down and face the fact that I might not make it through this time... again. Everyone else looked great tonight out there skating, and they're all doing crap that I just can't do yet. It's going to take so much to catch up, and I'm going to be hindered so much by the fact that my ankle hurts more than it did in the beginning.

Plus, a couple of the Psycho Sisters recently sprained their ankles. They're up and going again, though taking it slow. If they can do it, I can do it... right? I really want to get up and do these drills. I think I probably could have handled tonight but I still felt a bit of pain and, again, I had promised I'd sit out a little longer.

I also think I'm going to start ditching the ankle brace. I kind of feel as if that's adding more to the pain than it's taking away, because it's hindering my movement. I'm having trouble bending at the ankle because of how restrictive it is. I feel like it increased the pain in the plantar fascia as well as in the right side of my calf above my ankle.

So basically, everything the doctor told me, I might be throwing out the window.

Fun Fact of the Day

When you're injured and already sore from skating and some off-skates plyometrics, getting drunk and jumping on a trampoline is not the best recovery plan.

Just had to make a quick update before work. While I felt like a horrible person for quitting early, it was totally the best thing for me. I still have the lovely body soreness that I use as a gauge for whether or not I pushed myself hard enough at practice, but don't have the crippling ankle pain this morning that I had on Tuesday morning. Yay!

Physical therapy tomorrow to hopefully get shit straight.

In which I set a plan for improvement

I finally made the decision today to take care of myself. I've been in some serious fucking pain for two days in a row, partially because of pushing myself in practice more than the doctor originally wanted me to, partially because I've been in shitty work shoes walking around like crazy for two days straight. Tonight I didn't skate as hard as I probably could have. I sat out for the last half hour or so. After about 10 minutes of sitting out, I know I could have gotten back up and tried again, but I didn't want to risk getting up, feeling horrible pain again, then sitting out again.

I didn't get to finish out some necessary practice time. I'll fall behind a little more still. But hopefully I'll get caught up soon. Once I feel a little more comfortable with the ankle situation, I'll start heading over to Barber Park and practicing more, talk Shae into coming down from Ocala and working with me, and maybe trying to hit the Luna practices on Sunday.

But yes, taking care of myself. While the doctor hasn't said this, I recognize that part of my ankle issue is my weight. I've struggled with weight problems for a long time, stemming from poor nutritional habits built during childhood. So today I downloaded an app for the phone to start tracking food and exercise in order to try to lose a little bit of weight. I'm also back to taking my vitamins again, something I got off of fairly recently. I've done stuff like this before, but I've never kept up with it because of it being inconvenient, getting bored with it, falling off the wagon and never getting back on, etc. but hopefully derby proves to be the driving force that keeps me going on this.

I'm also going back to my weekly goals. Having just a small amount of things that I really need to focus on helped me out a lot early in this recruitment.

1. Derby stance. I need to do this even more. I think the new exercise I picked up in PT should help with this. It reeeeally works the quads.
2. Balancing on my right leg. The right leg is the problem leg, but if I can't balance on it, I'm going to struggle with blocking. I have a hard time hitting on that right side, and fall fairly easy on the right.
3. Staying positive. I whine. A lot. Not necessarily in practice, but on here. It's a new goal to make some sort of statement about something awesome that I did.
4. Controlling my arms. I need to keep my elbows in when making a hit and doing crossovers. I feel like a chicken flapping it's wings.
5. Do the full range of my ankle exercises instead of only half of them.

And to start off my goals? Something positive: I took a hit, fell and did a pretty decent superman without even thinking about it.